Les Tableaux: Suivis de L'Histoire de Mademoiselle de Syane Et Du Comte de Marcy (1771)

The actual events in this novel are based on the true story of my family: myself (thirty-two) and my children (three girlsaages eight, four and threeaand a six-year-old boy). A dramatic change occurred in my family in an instant after my wife and the mother of these children abandoned them without even saying good-bye. She seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth. It would be fifteen years before she would make her first contact since the desertion. After she abandoned us, our lives would take a turn for the worse. We were homeless, hungry and rejected by our own family who put us out onto the winter streets. We were brutally terrorized by neighbors. We had to walk five miles across snow-packed roads and through freezing temperatures to buy groceries as well as a late night walk to a hospital when one of my daughters was very ill. The story ends with me being separated from all four children.